Both human and animal studies support the relationship between depression and reward processing abnormalities, giving rise to the expectation that neural signals of these processes may serve as biomarkers or mechanistic treatment targets. Given the great promise of this research line, we scrutinized those findings and the theoretical claims that underlie them. To achieve this, we applied the framework provided by classical work on causality as well as contemporary approaches to prediction. We identified a number of conceptual, practical, and analytical challenges to this line of research and used a preregistered meta-analysis to quantify the longitudinal associations between reward processing abnormalities and depression. We also investigated the impact of measurement error on reported data. We found that reward processing abnormalities do not reach levels that would be useful for clinical prediction, yet the available evidence does not preclude a possible causal role in depression.

中文翻译：

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远大的期望：对奖励加工作为抑郁症原因和预测因素的研究的批判性回顾和建议


人类和动物研究都支持抑郁症和奖赏处理异常之间的关系，这使得人们期望这些过程的神经信号可以作为生物标志物或机械治疗目标。鉴于这一研究方向的巨大前景，我们仔细研究了这些发现及其背后的理论主张。为了实现这一目标，我们应用了经典因果关系著作提供的框架以及当代的预测方法。我们确定了这一研究领域的许多概念、实践和分析挑战，并使用预先注册的荟萃分析来量化奖励处理异常与抑郁之间的纵向关联。我们还研究了测量误差对报告数据的影响。我们发现奖励处理异常并未达到对临床预测有用的水平，但现有证据并不排除其与抑郁症可能存在因果关系。